Salesforce sObject Data Dictionary Utility
Why?
Once upon a time, I was required to produce a Data Dictionary for various Salesforce apps. After exploring the out-of-the-box options, that was just too much grunt work. Checked out some 3rd party AppExchange apps, they either cost too much for what they did or were shaky at best.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
So, why not put together a quick C# winform client app, gives me a chance to further explore the Salesforce API, and produce the raw materials(csv) for the required data dictionary documentation?
There are still a number of things I would like to add when I get time, as it stands today it does what I need for my particular use case. May help others in the same or similar situation. As this is a work in progress, use at own risk.
Usage
- Run exe
- Provide Username, Password and Security Token for your Salesforce Instance
- Check "Sandbox?" if you are connecting to a sandbox instance
- Click "Login and Retrieve sObjects", list view will populate with objects what login user can see
- Check off sObjects you want to extract additional info about
- Currently it is only getting sObject name, length, type and label for each field on each object
- If it is a picklist field, it will generate a string containing all options instead of the label
- If it is a reference field, it will indicate which sObject it relates to instead of the label
- Click "Generate Data Dictionary"
- Give file a name and location, Save.
That's about it for now, if anything goes wrong, check the log.txt file in the directory the exe is running from for details. Currently using API version 31 Partner WSDL, but you could always update the web reference to another API version if needed.
I recently tried to update API to version 40, but there is a known bug after/around API version 32, so I left it as is. For the interested more info here (not just for Enterprise WSDL, as this uses Partner):
https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=906F0000000AiPEIA0